Singlutionary's Non-Solo Vacation

I don't want to go on vacation by myself this year. I am bored with myself. I am sick of talking to myself. So, instead of going home to visit my old parents and having to sit around doing nothing, in one of the most beautiful regions of America, I am going to take some hot young friends with me.

And by "hot young friends" I mean interesting, wonderful people who still like to do things and still have the space in their lives to go on a trip with me.

I am making new friends, yes. And most of them are younger. By the time they're my age, I don't know that they'll have the space in their life to go on vacation with me. Marriage changes many things and committing to living life with one person makes for less time to commit to vacationing with another person. Having children makes people homebound and unable to freely adventure.

For a long time I have felt that making new friends was futile, since eventually everyone would couple and abandon me. But now I am hopeful, that I can make lasting friendships which will endure marriage and children. I hope to make friends with people who's friendship and company I can continue to value and count on many years down the road, in part because we share the same basic ideals when it comes to how we want to live.

I don't need many of these friends because friendship like that is a commitment in-and-of-itself. I can only have a few best friends at a time.

But having some fun and active friends to travel with this summer inspires me and makes me excited about life again in a way I haven't been for a long time. My best friend from kindergarten and I used to travel together and we used to dream up these elaborate roadtrips which would be ever so much better simply because of each other's company. But she is moving to the opposite coast with her family and I need new friends with whom I can play.

After three years of solitude, I am ready to open up to some good company and to companionship which is mutually beneficial and inspiring. I've been with myself so long that I have grown all I can without some external influence, without a new voice and perhaps some challenges to my way of looking at things. I am ready to travel with wonderful others, experiencing old things through their eyes and visa versa.

I am ready to play with others.

Or at least I will be in 3 weeks. Right now I am drowning in the whole school/work/life/house/pet world which is my life these days.

But summer is almost upon us and with it, some of the best adventures I've had in a long time.

There is nothing better than good company. And for a long time, that good company was my own. But now I am ready for someone new.

A Small Community of Close Friends

Since my post earlier this week on the Chicken Funeral, I've been thinking: Why am I such a whiner? I have wonderful friends and know really good people? Why am I so pissed off that nobody wanted to participate in my chicken funeral. I mean, it sounds like tons of fun, right?

After I performed the solo chicken funeral (in which even the chickens refused to participate), I went to a work meeting. And as I was arriving, a married couple who have a farm were dropping off their 1st official produce delivery EVER. They had two friends with them who were making a documentary about their farm and were taping this milestone in their farming business/life together.

For some reason, this added insult to injury. These people have a whole group of people who care about what they are doing and all support each other in doing it. They are making an official documentary about what they are doing and I am a one woman chicken grave digging idiot who props a camera up on a fence to document the death of my pet because nobody else is there to witness it.

Why am I not simply single, but SOLO is so many of my endeavors? "Wah wah wah! Why am I always alone? Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I guess I'll go eat chicken."

Well, the pity party ends here. Because after further thought I realized that I do have community. But my community isn't based around one interest. I know a lot of wonderful people all with different lifestyles and callings and professions. There is a backyard chicken keeping organization in my town that I am 100% inactive with although I do check their bulletin board on a regular basis. However, I've never been to an event or contributed. I don't have time and honestly, I'm not THAT interested in having my chickens take over my life. If I were a more active member of the group, I would have a serious chicken community of live chicken lovers and dead chicken mourners.

Then, I received a video from my friend that her sister, sister's partner and their friends had made. The video is funny and slightly like unto the funeral video except that they behead one of their chickens and prepare it for dinner. There are several people active in this video and there is more than one person to hold the camera, and a person to hold the chicken and another person to wield the axe that chops off the chickens head.

They all decided to do this together. This is their life and their friends and this is what they do for fun (make a video about killing and eating their chicken -- not the actual act of killing the chicken).

THAT is what I want (just the vegetarian version).

This seems every obvious to me now.

I've always been pursuing groups of people and volunteering my time and getting involved in community hoping that I'll find a community of my own. But the truth is that all I need are a few good friends with an inclusive attitude and a long-term commitment to our friendship.

I moved far away from my hometown (where the friend with the chicken head chopping sister lives) and in doing so, left behind many of my childhood friends. But I've been in my new city five years and I've put down roots. At the same time, I've been so busy building community for other people (through my meetup or my dog rescue work or through volunteering my ass off for one cause after another) that I haven't really taken the time to build my own individual, long term friendships. My roommates tend to be temporary and so I have quit letting them too much into my life, knowing that in a few months they'll move on. I've quit seeking new friends because so many of my friends disappeared once they got into a relationship. At some point I gave up on friendship.

I'm seeking people (not just one person) to live life with and share in the victories and failures. The community doesn't have to be big and it doesn't have to be centered upon ONE mutual interest. Maybe we enjoy each other's humor or maybe we enjoy the same activities. But we somehow commit to being there for each other as a small group and holding the camera for each other whenever it is needed.

I see how the friendships that I have continued to nurture are not practical ones, mainly because these friends live far away or are married and have children. What I need to allow myself to let into my life are friends with a similar mindset and lifestyle who live where I do and are available to support me as I support them. What I am looking for is not only a partner, but a small community of close friends (of which some may also be lovers).

Instead of welcoming people into the city and helping them get adjusted and saving dogs and film and blah-de-blah. I need to save myself a little space to make a life in. A life filled with friendship and caring and community to which I contribute, but also receive.

A Singlutionary Chicken Funeral

I have pet chickens in my backyard.

My least favorite chicken died yesterday. We weren't that close. I have a special bond with my other chickens -- they all have strong personalities and are feisty or stubborn or friendly. They stand out from the crowd but Little Beer was a quiet simple chicken. Maybe she had a deep inner life.

Who knows? She was a chicken. And now she is dead.

Yesterday, Little Beer's sister, Mohawk -- the other silkie chicken that she was brought up with from chickdom -- was bereaved. Mohawk wouldn't talk or eat or move. She just stood there stunned. Last night, instead of making a perch on the toilet in their coop (where she usually sleeps), she curled up on the floor of the coop. I poked her to make sure she was still alive. She looked at me without any recognition. I tried to get her to eat the most delicious chicken feed but she wouldn't budge. I thought this morning I would have another fluffy yellow chicken body to bury.

But this morning Mohawk hopped out of the coop with the other chickens, her period of morning, at least temporarily, ended. I brought her her own food and made the other chickens back off so she could eat, but there was no need: Mohawk was hungry and wasn't going to be bullied. She was back to her better self.

I have great plans for a chicken funeral. I want to dress up in my farmer outfit (where I look very much like my avatar from the formerly addictive facebook game, Farmville) and say some words over Little Beer's grave with the other chickens in attendance. I want to bury her with some good food and a bottle of beer. It would be fun and playful and a genuine celebration of Little Beer's life.

Lately I have taken to obsessively videotaping myself giving monologues while doing various things or going about my life. I do this because I do so many things alone and I want someone to share them with. So, I video them so that I can either edit the videos and share the online or so that I can just feel like there is someone to talk to about my experiences -- even if that "someone" is a credit card sized crappy video camera.

I would like to videotape the chicken funeral. But then I realize, it might be difficult to find someone to hold the camera. And there isn't enough time to train my dog to do it.

Like many single people, I have friends. I have wonderful friends and wonderful roommates. But as Special K commented on my Vday post, my life lacks intimacy. In the past, I have had intimate friendships where we knew everything about each other and talked all the time and we were available to each other for support no matter what. But as my friends coupled off or married, our intimate friendship was crowded out by their intimate partnership with their partner or spouse. And now, all too aware of the energies a romantic relationship demands, I am reluctant to develop new intimate friendships because I know that they are essentially temporary, a stop gap until one of us couples.

Although I take issue with the way our culture works, it is still the way our culture works.

And so, with the death of Little Beer, I also realize that what I would really like is a capable, supportive person in my life who would enjoy participating in a chicken funeral and would gracefully hold the video camera while I perform the necessary invented rites required to lay Little Beer to rest. It is an odd request and one made on a weekday in cloudy weather. If I am going to put the fun back in chicken funeral, I would like another human to share this unique experience with.

There are a few people I could call upon. I could ask one of my roommates, I could ask my best city friend. But people are busy. There are so many other things to do.

V is for Victorious

Thank you to Onely for their wonderful Valentines Day profile of happy single bloggers (of which Singlutionary is included).

This Valentines Day, I feel victorious. Not because I have a boyfriend to shower me in calories and crap but because I am not angstified over not having one.

I've actually never had a boyfriend or partner or date on Valentines day. I've always celebrated alone, not understanding what all the fuss is about. When I was a teenager I worked in a chocolate shop and had to wait on all the angsty men who came in knowing that whatever they got their woman would somehow not be enough or somehow be wrong. As a result, they would not only NOT get laid, but they would end up sleeping on the couch.

And then there is my friend who's then boyfriend got her a dead plant for V-day. She married him anyways, found out he was a freeloader over the course of the next 7 years and is now engaged to someone else.

If I were in a relationship, I would want to pretend that Valentines Day doesn't exist.

As a matter of fact, I am avoiding one of the men I've been dating this weekend. This particular gentleman -- I'll call him Suburban Sailboater -- seems like he might be a bit into romance. We've only been out twice and I like him but I need to tell him that I like him as a FRIEND. I realized during the second date that I am simply not interested in him romantically -- mainly because I can't see being in a relationship with him due to a lack of conversational chemistry but also due to his making some weird kissing NOISES when he was kissing my neck (like a hissy kissy sound). I don't know why but the hissy kissy sound made my vagina immediately close up shop for the night and drove him straight into friend territory.

I know, I know. I shouldn't be so picky about the hissy kissy from the Suburban Sailboater.

Whatever. If a guy isn't hot on the 2nd date, things are NOT going to get better. And by hot I don't mean tall, dark and handsome (although Suburban Sailboater is definitely tall, dark and geeky) but merely a good sexual match -- someone with whom I share a massive sexual chemistry worthy of sixteen condoms.

But I digress. This Valentines Day I am victorious because I am not TRYING to make something work just because I want something special to happen on V-day. I am not going on a forced date or pining away for Mr. Awesome. I am grateful for Suburban Sailboater and hope that we can develop a friendship sometime NEXT weekend when we are safely out of the V-day zone.

I am comfortable with myself, proud of where I am and satisfied with the work meeting/job interview/audition/homework that I will be doing tomorrow on St. Valentines Day.

Romance is always the best when it is organic and unexpected. The pressures of Valentines Day would best be served somewhere else. With less pomp, less force, less candy, fewer creepy pink bears and less expectation. And, dare I say it: With MORE love.

There are many folks who take the opportunity to celebrate Valentines day by celebrating all the non-romantic love in their lives. While I would prefer and just hide out from the holiday, I think that is a wonderful idea.

So if you want to buy someone a creepy pink bear, buy one for the people who love and support you no matter what -- even when you're in the doghouse, on the sofa and hornier than a rhino because you've been celibate for 3 to 30 years.

The Singlutionary Situation

I have one good friend in my city who is also single. Or WAS also single. Lately she has been going to and from another city to visit a man she recently met. Of course it is all my fault that they met and I have only myself to blame for the situation.

I have the bad habit of immediately starting to push friends away once they begin to get involved with someone. It isn't so much that I push them away but that I begin to expect less of them. And in a way, its an appropriate reaction. Having someone new in their life means that they have to make room for another person and I can't expect my friend to be as available as she once was.

By the time I was 22, all my best friends were married and very much involved in their relationships. At that time, there wasn't any space for me and my friends to have a relationship outside of their marriage. If I wanted to see my friend, I had to tolerate the husband. Since then, the husbands have become more tolerable or have been replaced with less obnoxious substitutes and my friend's have become less entangled socially and are receptive to "girl time" activities.

But for most of my early 20s, I felt like I needed to have a partner in order to enjoy my friends again. I felt that if I had a partner then we could couple date my friends. My partner would take on the horror of my friend's husbands and I would get to actually have an enjoyable visit with my friends. My friends, I think saw it the same way and provided me with healthy doses of advice on what to do to find a man so that my man could play with their man.

WHATEVER!

What partner of mine is going to want to put up with THAT crap?

"Will you be my boyfriend just so that I can take you to my friend's house and you can watch videos of my friend's husband's community theatre production and then watch him try on his costume and recite Shakespeare's sonnets?"

Eventually I gave up on finding a blow-up-doll-boyfriend-who-loves-amateur-Shakespeare and became Singlutionary.

But as people couple around me, I would like to have someone to depend on. Not that my coupled friends are undependable -- they are all very loving and wonderful and if I were to call them in any state of panic or emergency, they would be very much there for me. But their daily lives are taken up with their family, their work and other obligations. Any extra time they have, they want to spend with their spouse.

I suppose that now I would like someone to depend on socially and for the long haul. And, in the way our society is set up, with coupling being the norm, it seems that in order to find this, I might have to couple. Friendships, even the strongest ones, are secondary to spouses and families especially in the way people spend their day-to-day time.

It seems that just as soon as I find myself in a solid, lasting, stable friendship -- the friendship is altered by the presence of a romantic relationship.

Part of my situation, I think, is that I am very much a one-on-one person. If I have a good friend, it is because I enjoy our interesting conversations and her unique perspective. Even if her new partner is super cool, that doesn't mean that I'd enjoy hanging out with both of them as much as I would enjoy the one-on-one. And typically each friendship has its sacred activities -- with one of my friends it is eating good food, and another it is running. Sometimes the new partner doesn't have the same appreciation for the things my friend and I share and it kinda ruins the fun.

This is not to say that I won't stay friends with my friends who couple. I have stayed friends with ALL my friends who are coupled. I made the adjustment and learned how to be friends with both of them (sometimes more gracefully than others).

But I am tired of always looking for new available friends as others become unavailable. And maybe, the easiest thing to do would be to find a new best male friend and begin that whole monogamous endeavor called "a relationship".

Or I could just cultivate a ton of male friends so that if one of them couples, there will be 10 more waiting in the wings to share an order of yam fries and help decorate my backyard with empty toilets.

Singlutionary's 30by30

I'm back with a vengeance!

I'm blogging again -- all self-imposed gag orders have been lifted!

And I'm running.

And I'm going to quit eating like a teenager locked in an abandoned convenience store.

Two months ago, I went to a family reunion followed by a roadtrip with my parents followed by a childhood friend's wedding. I am not even going to touch upon the wedding on this blog (its all been said before) but what I decided on that trip is that I need to get my body back.

Get my body back from what? No, I didn't have a baby. But I feel like I did. I look like I did. But I have no excuse. There are no babies waking me up all night -- I sleep well. There are no children crying for a snack all day long -- I have a schedule where I can provide myself with nutritious meals without the temptation of grabbing something just to get through the day. I need to claim my body back from our culture of instant gratification, from two years of eating away my worries and sorrows, from the soon-to-be distant memories of struggling to become the Singlutionary that I am today.

On the trip I took my my parents, even my biggest pants were beginning to feel tight. And I realized that, as I approach 30, the time to deal with my bad habits is NOW. I want to enter my 30s in the best shape of my life. I want to be active. I want to climb mountains and forge rivers and do all sorts of Oregon Trail type activities. And I want it to be easy. So, while on this trip, I texted a Singlutionary friend and said "What about training for a marathon?" Her response was: "Sure, I need a absurd goal".

My absurd goal begins with running. I found a marathon training program online and, despite several little setbacks, I have been sticking to it. So far I've gone from not even being able to run a half a mile to being able to run over 1 mile without stopping. I've also gotten faster. I've never been a runner or an athlete of any kind. What I am really learning from this, is NOT to be intimidated by physical challenges. My body began to change right away. It tightened up. I have muscles in places that were formerly dough.

But I haven't lost any weight. This doesn't concern me at this juncture. As I keep running, I'll get more confidence and I'll be better able to keep those eating demons off my back. I don't want to diet. I don't want to deprive myself of food in the sort term because I know that I'll just end up pigging out in the long run. I want to finally overcome my horrible addiction to sweets and I want to nurture myself enough that I can create a lasting habit of cooking and eating good food at home.

So. Blogging: Check. Running: Check. Eating: I'll get back to you on that one.

The name of this project is titled: 30by30. I want to lose 30lbs by my birthday at the end of October.

But it really isn't about weight loss -- that is just the title of an absurd benchmark. This is about allowing myself to become the woman that I've always had the potential to be but never let myself become. It is about freedom -- physical freedom, freedom from my food issues, freedom from all the doubts that ganged up on me in my mid 20s.

On Halloween, I've invited my friends to run with me for 16 miles through out the city in our Halloween Outfits. And on New Years Eve, I am going to run 26 plus miles -- the length of a marathon.

Absurd goals are my new best friend.

Singlutionary's House Kicks Ass!!

Yet again, I am going to postpone posting my not-so-weekly Wednesday homeownership article.

But I did enjoy some raucous laughter tonight with my two remaining -- and very sane and fun roommates. We've taken back the house from Hoggle and we're loving it. It was nice to come home and relax in good company.

The past few weeks have been full of stress and full of wonder at the same time. I have a clarity in my mind and a simplicity in my day-to-day life that I've never quite managed to have before. I eat well and simply and in moderate proportions. I work daily, Monday through Friday, yet I miss the peak traffic rush. My chickens now produce one egg daily amongst the tree of them. And once I week I see my sister, and one a month we see her sister/my best friend.

This has nothing to do with owning a home. But life does feel settled and grounded and easy in a way that it never has before.

Of course last weekend I had a dead cat followed by an evil roommate. And, as always, I have suitors who fall to the wayside, just as the peak my interest.

But everything in life is OK as long as I can just come home to a peaceful, comfortable place with good people and good pets.

I've realized over the past several days, that despite everything, I LOVE having roommates. I never though I would say that. But good roommates become best friends. And multiple roommates create a community. Through my house, I've been able to provide an improved quality of life, not only for myself, but for the individuals that I share it with. And I am super excited about it.

Teapot (and Revolution Tea Sampler Giveaway from Single Edition**)

It has been over a week now since my first date with Teapot. I like Teapot and Teapot likes me. At least I think that is still the case. I usually never get past a constricted first date with guys. I know right away that there is a problem with them or with any potential "us". Most first dates make me want to cry and barf at the same time which is why I rarely go on them. The last time I got as far as a second date was with the Porsche driving Pedestrian Bridge Makeout Boy. Either he didn't like the way I kissed or he just wanted to get laid because I never heard from him again. That was 9 months ago.

Lately I've been having a hard time posting because I feel some conflict as a Singlutionary. For the first time in a long time, I actually have space in my life for a relationship. And I want one. Christina at Onely wrote not too long ago encouraging folks to ask themselves WHY they want a relationship instead of wanting to be single. I think this is a valid question. Most times when I have asked myself this question in the past, I have gotten an answer that wasn't quite right and was something I actually wanted in myself instead of needing a partner to fill it: Financial stability, someone to hold the ladder while I go on the roof, someone to get groceries on the way home from work, a house/home, someone to travel with. As I became more and more Singlutionary, I realized that many of these reasons for desiring to couple were merely deficits that I saw in myself and I figured out how to overcome them. I was able to buy a house on my single income (when I had an income-- I am now unemployed), I can always ask a roommate to hold the ladder, I've accepted that there is no such thing as financial stability in this day and age and I have created a wonderful home which I share with my roommates and my friends and adopted family. I have also accepted the challenges and joys of solo travel.

I know now what I do NOT want. I do not want someone to complete me. My life is already complete. In fact sometimes it is overwhelmingly full. I do not want someone to follow nor do I want a follower. 

I have learned to be a wonderful companion to myself. I also have fantastic roommates who I share stories of my day with and who I can tell about getting fired and other disappointments. I even have a friend who I can regale with tales of taking out toilets. 

I have a best friend in the same state and a sister in the same town. I have best friends from childhood in the same city. 

But all my friends are busy. And partnered.

I used to want to partner because I missed my friends and I felt that the only way to spend time with them was to partner myself so that we could do couple things together (this is when we were in our early 20s and they were newly married and wouldn't do anything without their "other half"). But my desire to have a companion now has less to do with wanting to see my friends more often (I would see them one-on-one now if I so desired) and more to do with having the space for a new friendship.

I have space in my life for a new relationship and I crave the growth and expansion that comes from engaging with a new person and making a new friend. Anais Nin wrote:

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

I have always felt this way about friendship-- that it is something powerful and sacred and truly important. I am ready for a new friend.

Why does this friend have to also be a romantic partner?

Because in our culture it is hard to not let friendships fall by the wayside. I already have a best friend and a sister. I have lots of women in my life. I would like a best male friend. And my experience with best male friends is that can be ripped from your life by a jealous wife/girlfriend. 

I am looking for a best male friend/partner. Because that kind of relationship is easier to keep forever. Most of my friends are forever friends. I don't really have too many of the other kind. 

I haven't heard from Teapot for a few days. I am assuming that he is busy with work and I don't mind because I am busy too. I don't have space for someone who wants to see me every day. Teapot might disappear too and then all this thinking is for nothing. But even if he does stick and I find myself coupled, I will still write and I will still be Singlutionary.

There is a Singlutionary way to be single and there is a Singlutionary way to be coupled. Either way. I am still living the Singlution. 

**Today is the first day of my weekly giveaway series. At the end of each Sunday post (yes, I know it is Monday already and I am duly embarrassed), I will state the giveaway item and the criteria to enter. The winner will be drawn from a hat of commenters. For this first giveaway, all you have to do in order to get your name in the hat is to comment stating that you'd like to be entered. I will post the winner at the end of next Sunday's blog along with the next giveaway item/criteria for entering.

Today's giveaway item is a Variety Tea Sampler of 5 teas from Revolution Tea. 

Today's giveaway is sponsored by SingleEdition.com

The Singlution Renewed

For a while I didn't have much to write about. I was busy adjusting to my new job and the new life that came with it. I've come to realize that it takes about 3 months (not three weeks) to really get adjusted to any new part of life and it takes about 3 years for a big new thing (like a new city or a new career or a new relationship) to feel normal.

Maybe that is why my relationships only last 3 months: I've never met someone that I'm willing to adjust to. I've also been told that the first 3 years of marriage are the hardest. 

But that isn't what I'm here to write about. At least, not today.

When I started this blog I was a brand new Singlutionary. I was so excited to have finally figured out that being single wasn't my fault or some deficit I needed to constantly be on the defensive about. Instead, being single, at any age and for any period of time is something to celebrate. There are many many many benefits to being single. Back in January, I was just learning how to count my blessings. 

Ten months later, I am still counting my blessings but the daily ins-and-outs of my shamelessly single life are so satisfactory that for a while I didn't know what to write about. Being Singlutionary doesn't seem so revolutionary anymore. 

But lately I've found myself having an affair with this blog. I meet up with it for lunch in the back room of my office. And then after a long day at work I come home and snuggle up with it in bed. This blog is my boyfriend. But it is my circle of friends too. The blogging community (both single and coupled) is always there for me and although I've never met so many of my wonderful blog friends face-to-face, I feel supported and loved every time I log on. I also appreciate the perceptiveness of my fellow bloggers, the interesting and beautiful things people have to say and the articulateness with which they have to say them.

I love being a voice in the singles blog world but for me, the days of "I'm so excited to be happy and single" are over. Instead I'm just happy and most of the time I forget that I'm single. Being single is just normal.

My life is still, to various degrees, shaped by my singleness but that is not all there is to me. So, I will continue to write about potential mates, about traveling alone, about attending weddings solo, about annoying comments from perpetually coupled friends. But I will also just write about my life, my family, my dog, my house, my friendships, my sad attempts at overcoming my desire to eat cake all day long (even when I am happy). 

So, in short. I am back and as Singlutionary as ever. In addition to more frequent posts, I'll be revamping my blog roll, updating the site, offering some giveaways, reviewing books and expanding my reach. But mostly I'll just be telling stories from my shamelessly single experience. 

My Body, My Soul

Today is my first day at home in two weeks. One week ago today I was on a plane back from my best friend and my unofficial little sister's mother's funeral. One week before that I was walking around like a zombie because Sexless Suitor sat on the opposite end of the sofa. I have been at my house off and on through the past two weeks. I have slept here, fitfully and deeply, I have tried to unpack, to tidy up, to get myself together. But today is my first whole day at home. Other days I have been on the road, or sick in bed or at work trying to not get fired. 

Today I feel normal again. I am not sure when my sister and my best friend (it was their mother who passed away suddenly, almost two weeks ago now) will feel normal again. This is a complicated kind of loss. Their mother was only 50 and although her death was sudden, it wasn't really a surprise. When I began to explain it to an older co-worker, someone who has seen a lot of life, he interrupted with a nod of understanding: "Hard life". Yes. She had a hard life and for the latter parts her children and then I were a witness to it. And, oftentimes, when her children were children, the hardness in her life spilled over onto them. 

There are so many complicated relationships at play here. And in many ways I am just an observer. But this woman who I had spent so much of my adult life being angry at or disgusted with is gone. It is a relief and a loss at the same time. Her kids feel the same way. But one result of her death is that it brought everyone together. 

We (my best friend, her sister who is also my unofficial little sister, their brothers and their wives and I) met in our hometown for a weekend. It was an erie experience, all together. The first morning there I walked from my parents home to the house where everyone else was staying. On the way I passed my elementary school just as the kids were arriving. For years I walked to school as a child this same way but now I, childless, was walking past and realized that I am now an adult, older than some of the parents. I searched the parent's faces wondering if I would recognize any of my former classmates. And then I did. Driving by was a friend from the 6th grade with her elementary aged kid in tow. 

There is this whole life that I didn't live when I left my hometown. There is this life there that seems uncanny and strange to me but which is totally normal and so very American and wholesome and apple pie. But even though none of us stayed in our hometown-- we all pretty much fled as soon as we were able, for one weekend, my best friend from kindergarten and all her family were gathered together in the same place we grew up to come to terms with their mother's death and the life she had lived there.

It was not easy. There are so many things I want to write about. I want to write about how my best friend's family is closer to me than my own, about how my unofficial sister really is my sister. I want to write about how my boss asked me: "So, now you want to go to the funeral?" as if I was asking for time off to go to a party. I want to write about how it is impossible for me to describe the relationships I have with people who are not biological kin without telling the whole stories of our lives. I want to write about how I think it was rude that my boss forced me to explain the entire relationship in order to validate the time I took off from work. I want to write about my mixed feelings about my hometown and how, to this day, feel totally out of place and misunderstood there.

But today is my first day at home. There is catching up to do. There is the blog crawl to write about, to comment on, to READ. There is ironing and laundry and a still empty room to rent. And there is my poor beat up and neglected body in need of nutrition and a pedicure. There is dinner to be made and groceries to be bought and order to be re-established. There are chickens to be fed and dogs to be walked.

Being single doesn't mean that I don't have responsibilities or committed relationships but it has forced me to learn how to nurture myself so that I can feel whole enough to be there for the people closest to me when they are feeling less than whole. 

Dear Abstinent Admirer

Dear Abstinent Admirer,

Obviously I have freaked you out. It has occurred to me that maybe you read my blog. I keep it pretty top secret and I've never mentioned it to you. But you have a magical intelligence and seem to know some pretty random things about the world so maybe you have uncovered the truth about me via Singlutionary.

I want to talk to you. You might be as rare as a Loch Ness Monster and as strange as Rainman but I still admire you. I admire your sense of humor, your discipline, your commitment to your values and your intelligence. I also respect your humility, your stability and your history. I love your totally sane yet entirely unconventional perspectives on the world. We might not be compatible as a couple or even as a potential couple. I love physical intimacy and I'm not sure I want to give that up for all eternity. I'm not sure I want to get married either. But we both raised younger siblings, more or less. We both seem set in our separate Singlutionary ways. And nobody can talk about my car the way you do. 

For a while we had this smart, funny, sweet and comforting emotional intimacy that I haven't enjoyed the likes of EVER with someone who didn't just want to get into my pants. Thank you for that. Thank you AND I want it back! I want to be friends. I want to go on walks and talk about your strange ways. And if you'd like we can talk about my strange ways too. I just freaking miss our friendship and when you come into the office all awkward and shy and acting like you'd rather be anyplace else it breaks my little Singlutionary heart.

Its OK if you don't want to snuggle with me before, during or after football games. We don't have to date or be boyfriend and girlfriend. You can look-but-not-touch all the college girls you want. But we ARE friends. I demand your friendship! I admire and respect and adore you. Period. As a human being. This is beyond romance and dating and "The Rules" and everything else that is lame about relationships. 

Abstinent Admirer, be my friend, again already, dang it. Forget about kissing and holding hands lets just hang out. 

Love, 

Singlutionary

Labor Day Pains and Pleasures

So I had a crisis over the weekend. I am afraid to admit that I may have strayed from my Singlution.

On Saturday I went on my first official date with Abstinent Admirer. It was super fun, his sister and brother-in-law were hecka nice and I felt comfortable even though I knew nothing about football. Let me amend that last statement: I felt comfortable when we were all four together. I think that Abstinent Admirer (who now shall be upgraded to the name of "Sexless Suitor") prefers to spend time with me well chaperoned. I felt a little rejected that he didn't touch me at all. In fact, he made great effort NOT to touch me. His sister, through the course of normal social interaction touched me more than he did. I'm not taking about anything sexual here. Sexless Suitor has already laid down his no-sex card. I'm just talking about a hand on a shoulder, a gesture, a tap, a bump --- the normal things that happen when you're sitting next to a person or (gasp) lightly flirting. I think Sexless Suitor is terrified of touching me. And it kinda hurt my feelings. 

Between that and realizing the next morning that one of my roommates had unexpectedly skipped town, I feel a little rejected all weekend. My confidence was in the crapper.

So I had a mighty unproductive weekend. I called all my friends and told them the story of the evening, about how Sexless Suitor sat on the very far end of the sofa and I on the other. I told them about how I had to initiate a HUG at the end of the evening. I said I didn't know what to do! Does the man like me? Does he not like me? What is going on? How do I proceed? I felt at a total loss. I felt overwhelmedly confused. It had taken me so long to embrace his abstinence and now it appeared that I was going to have to embrace puritan standards of pre-marital conduct. Or maybe Sexless Suitor just isn't attracted to me at all? Excuse my language, but my little heart just spent 48 hours in a cluster fuck.

And then I went swimming, solo. I had planned on going with a friend but she was too tired and swimming in 68 degree water at 9pm does require some extraordinary willpower. So I just decided to go by myself. I was a little scared of jumping into the cold and dark depths by myself (this is an outdoor, natural water pool and you really don't know what is down there) but I just did it anyways. And once I was in the water the Singlution came flooding back to me. 

I remembered that I am fine on my own and that I don't need Sexless Suitor to build me up. His admiration is extra but I already admire myself. If I want to go swimming or go running or travel, I can do all those things on my own. And if I can't snuggle myself I can do other activities which reduce my craving for snuggling. And I remembered how much I enjoy my own life and being able to do things on my own and spending time hearing myself think. Until now I've NEVER in my adult life had so much freedom to do what I want when I want and to focus so much on myself. I am enjoying that for now, living my life with my dog and my house and my job. 

Going to the game with Sexless Suitor was a bonus because it was an experience I wouldn't have had on my own. The things that I most enjoy about Sexless Suitor have to do with our friendship. Yes, I am attracted to the man (which makes sitting on one sofa while he sits on another quite aggravating) but I am in a great part attracted to him because of our conversations and the things I learn from him and the way we seem to be perfectly matched on the strangeness scale. I don't have any peer-aged siblings so attending a football game with Sexless Suitor's functional family was an interesting thing for me to participate in. It was a new experience all around and a rather pleasant one. There were some awkward moments and some disappointing ones and some frustrating ones and for the most part I felt like a foreign exchange student the whole evening. But it was fun. It was a good experience. And that is the only thing I need to take away from it. If Sexless Suitor wants to ask me out again, I will certainly say "yes". I like the man. But I also have to accept that if I am going to get involved with a guy who hasn't had sex in 18 years, I am going to have to be patient. 

And its so much easier to be patient when I am busy swimming through my own life and jumping into my own unknown depths while he builds up the courage to hold my hand. 

Dreaming of Vegetables

I am exhausted and I am craving vegetables. The new job seems to have an endless supply of free candy, soda and coffee which means that my entire diet last week consisted to those three items. Yesterday I crashed hard. Today I feel a little bit better.

Today, the only thing missing in my life is healthy food (and a shower and a clean house). But in my dream last night I dreamed that I was married. My in-laws had this duplex which was really kinda a duplex shack with all sorts of strange walls, etc. I thought we had our own place but when we went to go to bed it turned out that that there was another couple in the same room in another bed. I wasn't really bothered by all this closeness. What I was bothered by was the fact that I like to have sex. I drew the other female aside and tried to work out a deal with her (a la college dorm room style) that we each vacate the room for certain alternate periods to allow the other couple to have sex or we "do it super quiet". 

Ah. My waking life is so different. I woke up in my twin bed by myself. And my first thought was "gosh, I would feel a whole lot better if I ate some vegetables". 

Interestingly enough, my first thought was NOT "I am alone" or "I wish I had a husband" or "I want sex". That wasn't even my 2nd or 3rd thought or ANY thought yet this morning.

Yesterday, an IM suitor (you know, the ones who like to IM you when they get bored at work) left over from the match.com days inquired as to the reasons for my "sex hiatus". He seemed to think that I just hadn't met the right guy lately and all I needed was a dose of his manpowers and I'd give up on my sex hiatus forever. 

Its not that I don't have a sex drive. It IS that I don't want to intimately engage with anyone right now. I am still busy getting to know myself. So engaging with others is incredibly draining. I'd rather spend my energies (and limited free time) cooking or working on the house or swimming. I need to take care of myself and nurture myself right now and do activities which replenish my store of enthusiasm, charge up my passion batteries. And for some reason anytime I get involved with a new person (sexually or not) I end up giving a lot of myself to that new relationship. I think that this is just the nature of any new relationship. 

There will come a time when I am ready to re-engage with others and to enjoy new friendships and spend some time polishing the old ones. But that time hasn't come for me yet. I know this because every time I have tried to "get out there" and make new friends, I come home exhausted at my very core.

I have come to understand that as humans we have our own unique seasons. There are social seasons and then there are seasons of solitude. I suspect that in the past when we didn't have electric lighting and climate control, our internal seasons lined up more with the natural seasons. Winter was a time for solitude and reflection and summer was a time for socializing and connection and sharing. Obviously my seasons are all jacked up because its summer and I just want to be a hermit.

Although I am thriving at the new job which requires constantly meeting and connecting (in a professional manner) with new people. Maybe that is my big relationship for this summer. Who knows what next summer will bring.

Or maybe I am just simply a winter socializer with all the fruitcake and mulled wine and hot chocolate. 

Who knows. But I know enough by now to respect my own internal seasons and not to push myself in exhausting directions when I could be enjoying the comfort that solitude provides. 

And now, for the Cheesy Essay Questions Section:

What about you? What do you think about this concept of internal seasons? What kinds of things make solitude wonderful? What aspects of the social season do you most enjoy? 

True Love

One of my former lovers, Crazy Pot Farmer, is in the hospital with serious head injuries. This is how I found out: His cousin posted a bulletin on myspace asking people to pray for her cousin, Crazy Pot Farmer, who was, at the time, in critical condition (he is now stable although I don't know how extensive his head injuries may be). My sister saw his cousins post and forwarded it to me. So I learned from myspace that someone who I love had a brush with death and may or may not recover. But why do I feel glad to have been informed that Crazy Pot Farmer is in the hospital? How does my knowing his condition help anyone? He hasn't been a part of my life in a long time so what does it really have anything to do with me? Does this even really affect my life? Especially in comparison to the lives of his mother and the rest of his gigantic family who are deeply affected by this on a day to day, moment by moment level?

All of this made me think about relationships and about, well, love. Love is the underlying connector between people. When we talk about love we tend to talk about it in romantic terms or in terms of family. Love, in the context of non-family, non-romantic relationships seems watered down and not the "real thing". People talk about finding their "one true love" as if all the other love in their life was false. Especially when friends and lovers slip out of our lives, the love seems to become null and void, to fade in validity as time goes on. When friendships fade away we talk about the love in past tense: "We used to be friends. I used to love him." 

I would like to argue that we extend and empower our definition of love to include friendships, past and present. Even when there is no longer a practical connection, there is still love. I can love an infinite number of people but I can only keep in contact with a limited few. But that doesn't mean that I love the ones I fell out of touch with any less truly.

If I say, "I still love Crazy Pot Farmer", it sounds as if I am IN LOVE with him in this complicated way and can't move on. But that isn't the case. Crazy Pot Farmer and I had/have an on-again-off-again mutually abrasive friendship where we most of the time enjoyed annoying the crap out of one another. Like many friendships it was casual. We would connect every now and again when life threw us together. 

But the casualness of our relationship doesn't discredit the times we did connect or the lastingness of that connection. Crazy Pot Farmer, while crazy, is also one of my kindred spirits. It is rare to feel as if you really know someone at the core of who they are, to feel as if their soul and your soul walked out of all the things which usually bind us and went swimming together. When this happens craziness and compatibility and lifestyle don't matter because the soul knows nothing of socially acceptable behavior. I was never in love with Crazy Pot Farmer. We were/are friends with occasional benefits but there is still true love there.

The last time I saw him was at his mom's house. I was there visiting and he was there with his girlfriend. We were all swimming. He and I were polite socially but a little aloof (I'm sure he didn't want the girlfriend to know that we used to be lovers) until we bumped into each other in the garage. Nobody else was around and for a moment we exchange a few sentences about the house and a photo on the fridge from the old days. But in that 2.5 minutes we exchanged lifetimes of intimacy and friendship. On the surface our human mouths were moving and words were being exchanged. But underneath all that our souls were doing somersaults on the trampoline. And then we went back out into the real world and our souls went back into hiding. 

Just because Crazy Pot Farmer's soul and my soul are no longer practicing their synchronized swimming routine every week or that our bodies are no longer having sex every now and again doesn't mean that the connection is any less valid. Sex might be in the past tense now but our souls live on. Even if Crazy Pot Farmer's brain doesn't. 

A serious accident like Crazy Pot Farmer's is far more traumatic for the people who are a part of his daily life and who have been a part of his daily life for as long as he has been alive. His mother, for instance, raised him as a single mother from the time she was 15 years old. I am not trying to compare our little soul dance with theirs. I am just trying to say that the love which exists in the nooks and crannies of life isn't any less true than the love people share in broad daylight. 

Singlutionary Shifts

I've changed since I began this blog. When I started it 5 months ago, I was a Baby Singlutionary. Every little step towards being a Satisfied Single was a huge discovery and I found blogging a cathartic and supportive way to put my revelations into words. But now, being a Satisfied Single is no longer news to me. I'm used to it. When I started this blog, I wanted to go out shouting from the rooftops: "I am SINGLE AND HAPPY!" Now I rarely even think about the fact that I am single and when the little girl I watch says: "Why aren't you married? You're old enough." it doesn't even occur to me to be defensive (although I do want to tell her that it is perfectly OK to be "old enough" and single for her own sake). When I do think about my fantastic life, the fact that I am single and happy is like a big "no duh!". Being single and being happy is no longer news. It just is. 

Because of this transformation, I been struggling to find a new approach to writing Singlutionary which isn't as dependent upon my own personal revelations or on screaming "single is sexy" from the rooftops. 

Am I giving up on the Singlution? Heck NO! Of course not. The community that I have found online has sustained and inspired me and I want to continue to participate in these conversations and in building a single-positive world. But things will change a little bit. My posts will be shorter (hey, no more novels to read, right?) and less frequent (about 1 per week) and I am going to try and use a more conversational and interactive approach. What does that mean to you, dear reader? Comment more, read other people's comments and then comment again! Use this blog to pose your own questions or to vent your own frustrations or to celebrate your own singleness. 

So what does my "I'm single and happy, DUH!" life look like? Here are some changes in my life which came about because of this blog but which are now, bittersweetly, edging out the time I used to spend writing Singlutionary:

• I recovered from 2008's many personal hurdles (which were so large and so frequent, that I wasn't always sure I would ever get past them)
  
• I have been reunited with my active (running, swimming, biking, hiking) dog loving self after a year of almost 100% inactivity and exhaustion
  
• I found offline community and friendship right here in my home and spend a great deal of time with my roommates
  
• I stopped being intimidated by large homeowner projects and began a garden and will soon replace all three toilets all by myself
  
• For the first time in years I feel excited about having a full time job
• I've resumed long neglected writing projects and am considering applying to an MFA program in creative writing

And so the Singlution moves on. 

Singlutionary Short Circuits

I have about five drafts that I can't seem to finish. I write this blog as I discover things myself and as I learn how to live a more Singlutionary life. These days I have many thoughts but they're all in a jumble and I can't seem to come to any conclusions. So be prepared for an onslaught of posts just as soon as my brain works out this crazy equation. 

In the meantime, here is my only clear thought:

I finally quit match.com! And I'm pretty certain that I do not want a boyfriend right now. Actually, I am absolutely certain that I do not want to date and I do not want to be in a relationship. I've got too many things to do with my life before I want to get involved in someone else's. 

But in the past few months I've been getting back to my naturally active self and abandoning the sleep-all-day-in-despair-and-exhaustion self which ruled the roost for pretty much all of 2008. I've been doing lots of things that I already love and I bet that, if I wanted to date, I would be able to find potential quality friends and lovers all over the place. All I would have to do is to turn my head to the side and look around and smile at people. Right now, I am still in survival mode a little bit, getting in and getting out and not making eye contact with anyone. I am still conserving my energies, keeping it to myself, unwilling to share. I am still charging up my batteries after letting them be sucked dry. 

But when I do dare to look around I see interesting people. And surprisingly, not all of them are wearing giant wedding bands. And even more surprisingly, none of them look like freeloading freaks.

Here are some places that I joyfully frequent and where I believe I am far more likely to make a love connection (plutonic or romantic) than on the ole computer:

The hike and bike trail on the lake

The 2 mile secret loop where single walkers with dogs abound

The gym

My mailbox

The local swimming hole

The new organicy food grocery store that just went in down the street

The organic garden store

Dog training class

In the past, I never thought it was possible to strike up a conversation or meet someone in say, the grocery store. It seemed too forced especially when my first question was: "Are you single" and my next question was: "Do you want to marry me?" Of course I'm not going to be able to make casual conversation with all that pressure looming over me. 

When I was in the place of single-as-desperate instead of single-and-satisfied, it was really hard to get to know people in random places. But now that I am learning to be who I am and enjoy my life I wouldn't be afraid to talk to someone in dog class or on the hike and bike trail because I would just be chatting. I'm not looking for anything, just enjoying my life. And if the other person is like: "You freak. Ew. Quit talking to me. You stink." I would be like: "Hey, I actually do stink a little bit but its not like your pits are all pristine in this weather either." And I would go on my merry way. 

Footloose Femails: An Email Group!

I wrote in my previous post that I would keep y'all updated as to when my dear Australian Reader began her email group. Well, now, from Singal we have Footloose Femails! Its a friendship email group for single women at yahoogroups and you can find it here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/footloosefemails/

I am on my way to join right now! 

Also, I know that I haven't been posting as often lately. Its not cause I've been busy but I have been overwhelmed! But I will get back on track sooner or later!!

Dear Singlutionary!

I know that I gush a lot about the fantastic sense of support and community that I get from the singles blogging community and from writing Singlutionary. Well, that sense expanded even more this week when I received emails seeking advice/support from two readers:

The first reader is from Australia and wrote that she is looking for an online community of single female friends through an email group. Of course an email group has no geographical boundaries but can offer a great deal of support and more intimate friendship to folks the world over. Friends are IMPORTANT to Singlutionaries so I am all for the idea of people starting email groups especially when not everyone lives in a wonderful vibrant city and might *need* to connect beyond their neighborhood to find some single kindred spirits. As I hear more details about this email group, I will be sure to blog about it.

The second reader found me by doing an internet search for Susan Boyle. How did THAT happen? I was going to post something about Susan Boyle but haven't yet. Anyways, this reader asked that I write about two things: newly coupled people ditching their single friends only to come crawling back after-the-fact and choosing singleness over ickypoo relationships. Here is what I have to say about each of those issues:

Newly Coupled People Ditching Their Single Friends

Ew. Gross. There is nothing more rude or heartbreaking than having a BFF one day and no BFF the next. This is really really hurtful and I know because I have been through it. Our friends are essential pillars in our support networks and are sometimes more capable of being "there" for us than family. Sometimes friends ARE family especially if family is absent or dysfunctional or can't relate to a certain aspect of your life. Unfortunately, I don't think that our culture reveres friendship very much. Friends are something for childhood before the "real" stuff like marriage and children comes into play. There is this perception that when we grow up we don't "need" our friends anymore. Unfortunately, this assumption lies on the premise that every one "grows up" when they get married and that everyone gets married at exactly the same time as all their other friends so that nobody is left out. And that is a faulty concept because married people still need friends, and good ones too!

So, why do people ditch their friends when they get into a relationship? Sigh. I think this is partly due to culture and this concept that romantic love "sweeps you off your feet". There are people who want to feel so wrapped up in their partner that they can not see or hear anyone else. Also, as a practical matter, people only have a certain number of social hours and when a new person comes on the scene, they have to balance out those hours with the time they usually spend with friends. Part of the Singlutionary mindset is to have a full satisfying life with our without a partner. If your life is full and satisfying and you're not wah-wah-waiting for Mr./Mrs. Right all day long, the chances that you're going to run off in the sunset (never to be seen again) with him/her are more slim. Still, while I hope to contribute to the singles movement where singledom and friendship are honored and revered just as much as romantic relationships, I can't just cast a magical Singlutionary spell on the world so that everyone behaves the way I want no matter how much I want to.

What I can do is offer up what I have learned from my own hard knocks with friends:

1. Seek out friends who are happy, satisfied singles (or coupled Singlutionaries). A big red flag for me when making a new friend is if she only wants to do men-seeking activities like go to bars to talk to meet guys, etc. Our interests must be beyond finding a man together. 

2. Learn to enjoy at least a little bit of solitude. I know that this is super hard for people with the opposite personality type of me. I love alone time but some people feel antsy and anxious when alone. Might I be a little cliche and suggest taking a yoga or meditation class? There, in the company of others, you'll clear out your mind and be alone in there and see that its not so scary after all. Its just . . . peaceful. If you learn how to be your own best friend, you'll realize that you're never totally alone.

3. Get good at making new friends because no matter how awesome your current friends are, there are times in life where they won't (for whatever valid reasons) be able to be there for you. They might be sick or overwhelmed or getting a divorce and simply unable to be a friend because they are struggling so hard just to keep their own life together. Its easy to feel angry and abandoned anytime someone you count on goes missing from your life but sometimes you just have to let them be. This is a great time to make new friends. Meetup.com is a great resource but if you don't live in a major city, try an online community for singles or take classes, join a group that interests you, hang out at the coffee shop or any place where people gather. Practice spotting people who look like they might have something in common with you. Finding new friends is like dating so try not to feel rejected when it doesn't work out at first. Most of the time, its just a timing thing: you need a new friend and the potential new friend is trying to juggle too many other commitments at the moment.

4. Explore your interests. I think a lot of people have things they really want to do (mine is: take a day trip out to that one little town and explore) but they are waiting to be in a relationship to do it. Do it yourself. If you can afford to, take surfing classes instead of waiting for a hunky surfer to walk into your life, take you in his/her strong arms and show you how its done. I know its scary to join up in things all on your own and ideally you'd have a friend to go with you but if you just buck up and do it anyways, chances are you'll meet a new friend doing the very thing you sat around for three months wishing you had a friend to it with. And even if you don't make a new friend, this is another opportunity to get to know yourself better!

The same reader also asked about accepting being single after a series of really bad relationships. This is what I have to offer up on THAT one:

I have so been there. I too felt like I was behind since the time I was 13! Yes! 13! I know, I am a total nutcase. When I was 13, I felt like it was too late for me, that I would never catch up and that I would never be happy in a relationship. Of course my adolescent despair proved to be somewhat correct because for the next 15 years I would continue to feel like I was behind, like I would never be in a good relationship and that there was something inherently and essentially wrong with me which made all this the case. And my thinking played out in real life creating a vicious cycle.

All of my relationships were lacking. Some were better than others. Some even bordered on being good but for the most part the suffering I experienced far outweighed the pleasure. 

I was desperate. I took up with anyone who could put two sentences together. I didn't even ask if maybe they could do a third sentence just to be sure they were competent. If a guy liked me and wasn't too annoying, I liked him. That was the way it worked. 

And that is why I now love being single! I think that the very first thing in finding a partner who isn't going to use and abuse you is to know your own worth. How could I know my own worth if I was running around with idiots who wanted the world from me in exchange for a cheese cracker? I needed some time and space to get to know myself. Now I am learning about myself and every day I am impressed by how amazing I am. I guess you could say that I am falling in love with myself but that is super cheesy and the fact that I wrote that kinda makes me want to barf. Anyways, I am wonderful! I value myself and the things I can do with my life more and more every day. More than that, I value, for the first time, the life that I have built for myself. Because of this, I would never let some idiot guy come in and smash up my awesome little life with his sledgehammer of idiocy. 

One thing I've noticed about myself in the past months is that I am way more picky about who I let into my life. This goes for men and for women, for guys I meet on match.com and people I meet in my community. Because I have taken the time to get to know myself and realize all that I have to offer, I want to be around people who also have a lot to offer and know how to share it. 

I used to live my life like a love free-for-all. I was that girl on the parade float throwing out candy to the crowd. I just gave myself away. I worked for far less money than I was worth, I gave away my time to anyone who asked for it, I supported freeloaders, etc. Now I am still riding in the parade but I am just sitting there satisfied basking in my own joyfulness and hanging out with the other folks on my float and smelling the zillions of flowers all around me (in this fantasy I have no allergies). 

I guess what I am trying to say is that being single is not sad or lonely or depressing. It can be one of the best opportunities of your life. And being single does not mean giving up on love. In fact, I think that choosing to be single is exactly the opposite!

My House and Me: One Less Ounce of Desperation Part 1

I've written about desperate dating but there are two sides to that icky-poo coin. There are the effects of desperate dating and then there are the causes.

Until recently, I never was really able to pinpoint the cause of my own desperation when it came to relationships with men. 

I grew up pretty feminist. My mom never entered me into a beauty pageant and set an example by doing home repair projects on her own. She didn't even take my dad's last name. But at the same time, my parents had pretty traditional gender roles. My dad worked. My mom stayed home and then went to work part-time when I was in school. So while I was taught that men could (and should) cook and do laundry and that women could (and should) work for a living, that was not exactly the environment that I was raised in.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way criticizing this arrangement. That was what worked for them and it wasn't based on gender as much as the fact that my dad had a good stable job and my mom was really good at fixing up houses. My dad loves routine and can deal with the day-to-day monotony of going to the same office for 20 years. My mom loves change and excitement and is a risk taker. If their personalities had been switched, I wouldn't be surprised if their roles would have been switched as well.

So, I never thought that I "needed" a man in the way some of my friends do. I've always been very independent and wanted to learn to do things on my own. I don't need a man to fix my car or take me to dinner or to make my life complete. I don't need a man to show me the way or to protect me or make me feel special. I get validation from multiple sources, from both men and women. I fix my own car, take myself to dinner and I complete me!

But under all my bravado, my whole life, I have thought that I needed to be in a relationship in order to do three things (that I am yet aware of): settle down, have financial security and enjoy life. 

The first of these subconscious assumptions began to crumble two years ago when I bought my house. I was overwhelmed. It needed too much work and I had no time and no money and I didn't have any other friends who were homeowners or a community of do-it-yourselfers to pitch in or give advice. At the same time, I was freaking out because my life pre-homeownership was incredibly mobile. I moved every year. I never had a permanent place. And while I was ready to "settle down" I felt freaked out that it was happening to me. Something just felt off, like I had forgotten to do something important. What was I giving up by settling down? I had that bad feeling you get when you pack for a trip to the tropics and you forgot to pack your bathing suit. Something was amiss. 

In buying the house, I was making a commitment. And it was a commitment that I very much wanted to make. But in the back of my mind somewhere, underneath all my independence and education and self awareness, was this idea that having a house and settling down is something one does WITH a partner. I was overwhelmed by the house because I thought I had to do everything myself. My parents had done everything themselves and only hired people to do work that required permits or expertise beyond their own. But there were two of them. And there is one of me. 

It took me a while to feel OK with paying someone to mow my yard. I mean, shouldn't I be doing that myself? It took me a while to forgive myself for taking three months to paint the living room (which has vaulted ceilings and exposed beams and required borrowing a 9 foot ladder). Why couldn't I get it done in a weekend?

And once I realized that I, on my own, could not replicate the perfection of my parent's do-it-yourself lifestyle, I could find my own balance and my own groove. It wasn't that I was missing something or defective in some way. It wasn't that I should have done things in the proper order and waited to buy as house as a newlywed. What is to guarantee that this imaginary husband is a do-it-yourselfer anyways? A huge part of my parents relationship is based on their houses. I'm not sure that I want my relationship to be based on the house. Or on dogs. Or on travel. 

But for a while, after buying the house, I felt really desperate for a man. I felt like I just couldn't cope with all the responsibilities of the house on my own and secretly I wanted some sexy carpenter/electrician/plumber/contractor/landscaper/HVAC guy to walk into my life, literally sweep me off my feet and carry me over my own threshold. But then I realized all that I would sacrifice if the house belonged to someone else and I depended up on him to do everything the house required. It would no longer be my adventure and I would not have the chance to learn more or to tackle the challenges I had so longed for. And more importantly, I realized this was the ONLY reason I wanted a man in my life so badly. I would just be using this hottie handyman for his, uh, hands *ahem*. And while that makes for a great daydream, it doesn't make for a great relationship.

This was the first of my revelations regarding my subconscious assumptions about what I can and can not do as a single. I had no idea that I had been wah-wah-waiting for someone to settle down, but some part of me was. 

I will write about my more recent experiences with finances and fun next!

Singlutionary's New BFF

So I went and wrote a personals add for a new BFF: Singlutionary's New BFF. Kinda like Paris Hilton's New BFF except that I want: a man, a grown up, someone who likes trees and rocks and nature, has no boobs and might be interested in some physical affection. But the friendship comes first. I am following in the same vein as the blog I wrote about wanting to sleep with the Libertarian. 

Bosslady told me that the BFFs with benefits is what EVERY guy wants. She also told me that struggling to find peers and make new friends is one of those "welcome to adulthood" things. This was further reinforced when I went on CL to do some research and I found very few posts that were written in grade-7-or-above English much less someone I could really be friends with. 

So, I decided to post my own and see what happened.

I've had 10 responses in 5 hours! Most of which are either illiterate or creepy. Almost all of which are HILARIOUS!  I wish I could post some of the responses here but lets just say that one of the incredibly illiterate ones was written by an elementary school teacher who seemed very upset that some folks can't swim when he takes them out on his boat. I was disturbed that this gent is a TEACHER! 

Then there was a guy who wanted to take a hike on an "obscure" trail. Bosslady told me he might kill me and bury my body in the woods. 

The BEST one so far is addressed to: My Lovely Lady Lumps. It waxes on for eight paragraphs about a whole lot of nothing including the lad's former pot-smoking habits concluding that: "As long as you're not some puritanical bud-hater, we'll be fine."

I love Craigslist! This is the best entertainment I've had all week!